Kamakura Art

In 1180 a civil war broke out between two military clans, the Taira
and the Minamoto; five years later the Minamoto emerged victorious and
established a de facto seat of government at the seaside village of Kamakura,
where it remained until 1333. With the of power from the nobility
to the warrior class, the arts had to satisfy a new audience: soldiers,
men devoted to the skills of warfare; priests committed to making Buddhism
available to illiterate commoners; and conservatives, the nobility and some
members of the priesthood who regretted the declining power of the court.
Thus, realism, a popularizing trend, and a classical revival characterize
the art of the Kamakura period.

Sculpture

The Kei school of sculptors, particularly Unkei, created a new, more
realistic style of sculpture. The two Nio guardian images (1203) in the
Great South Gate of the Todai-ji in Nara illustrate Unkei's dynamic suprarealistic
style. The images, about 8 m (about 26 ft) tall, were carved of multiple
blocks in a period of about three months, a feat indicative of a developed
studio system of artisans working under the direction of a master sculptor.
Unkei's polychromed wood sculptures (1208, Kofuku-ji Temple, Nara) of two
Indian sages, Muchaku and Seshin, the legendary founders of the Hosso sect,
are among the most accomplished realistic works of the period; as rendered
by Unkei, they are remarkably individualized and believable images.

Calligraphy and Painting

The Kegon Engi Emaki, the illustrated history of the founding of the
Kegon sect, is an excellent example of the popularizing trend in Kamakura
painting. The Kegon sect, one of the most important in the Nara period,
fell on hard times during the ascendancy of the Pure Land sects. After
the Gempei civil war (1180-85), Priest Myo-e of the Kozanji Temple sought
to revive the sect and also to provide a refuge for women widowed by the
war. The wives of samurai, even noblewomen, were discouraged from learning
more than a syllabary system for transcribing sounds and ideas, and most
were incapable of reading texts that employed Chinese ideographs. Thus,
the Kegon Engi Emaki combines passages of text, written with a maximum
of easily readable syllables, and illustrations that have the dialogue
between characters written next to the speakers, a technique comparable
to contemporary comic strips. The plot of the emaki, the lives of the two
Korean priests who founded the Kegon sect, is swiftly paced and filled
with fantastic feats such as a journey to the palace of the Ocean King,
and a poignant love story. A work in a more conservative vein is the illustrated
version of Murasaki Shikibu's diary. Emaki versions of her novel continued
to be produced, but the nobility, attuned to the new interest in realism
yet nostalgic for past days of wealth and power, revived and illustrated
the diary in order to recapture the splendor of the author's times. One
of the most beautiful passages illustrates the episode in which Murasaki
Shikibu is playfully held prisoner in her room by two young courtiers,
while, just outside, moonlight gleams on the mossy banks of a rivulet in
the imperial garden.